On Judges, Judging...or the quest for 'essence' in psychology

In an applied Cognitive Psychology module concerned with Judgement processes such as the one for which this blog is devised and undertaken, it seems almost natural to talk about those who judge by profession, i.e. court judges. Drawing upon a research article by Dahmi (2003) that explored the processes of decisions taken by professional judges in courts, I have had to participate in devising a small presentation on the role of heuristics in such contexts.

In contrast to legal theory, which in a somewhat commonsensical way, assumes that judges evaluate all information that is available to them in order to arrive to a decision, cognitive psychological research such as the paper mentioned above has claimed that people use heuristic strategies that depart from weighing and combining all available information appropriately. Such a claim was based on Dahmi’s (2003) study that tested the ability of two decision making models to predict bail decisions in courts. On one hand, heuristic strategies search only a part of all available cues and even base a decision on one single cue. For instance the matching heuristic (Dhami & Ayton, 2001) was tested in the aforementioned research as a predictor of judges decisions are taken in a non-compensatory way (i.e. without ‘weighing’ or judging the importance of all pieces of information available). It attracts attention to information that is pre-consciously selected as relevant (Evans, 1998) as follows: If the first cue that is encountered gives a reason for a punitive decision then such a decision will be predicted, while if the first cue doesn’t give a reason for being punitive the second one will be examined. If the second cue gives a reason for a punitive decision then such a decision can be predicted, if not a non-punitive decision will be reached (it should be noted that a subset can encompass more than two cues). For instance, in the court study prosecution requests and previous convictions where two cues that were used in such a way. In contrast, historically it has been proposed that linear regression models are used to reach judgements. That is, all available pieces of information are searched, differentially weighed and combined to reach a decision (Dahmi, 2003). Such a process is described by Franklin’s rule (Dahmi, 2003). When Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the USA, had an important decision to make, he would examine the situation and make a list of all the factors favouring each of his possible options (i.e. pros and cons). Then based on all the information on his list, he would make his decision. In a computational model, such a principle would mean that a weighting function would be applied to all cues available and therefore a decision would be reached in a due process, slowly and statically. Psychological research such as the study described here, has indicated that judges bail or non-bail decision processes are ‘fast and frugal’ (Dahmi, 2003). Judgements are better predicted by a simple matching heuristic, than a process integrating all available information, and might even be based on a single cue!

At first, such findings contradict legal theory and perhaps public perception of justice, That is, people tend to think that a judge would examine all available information carefully to arrive to a decision that might have a dramatic impact on someone’s life. Yet what is demonstrated by cognitive psychology here is that out perceptions of justice may be unrealistic. At some level there is something horrific about this. The almost un-thoughtful rapidity and perhaps ‘close-minded’ equations of different (but similar) cases make me wonder how many court rulings have been as ‘fast and frugal’ as implied here as opposed to the analytical, thoughtful and carefully weighed decisions put forward by the legal discourse.

It was suggested in class that such findings highlight the need for cognitive training of judges in order to help them consciously use more of the information available. Suggestions even went as far as to suggest that a computational equation derived by simple heuristics would actually be well suited to ‘decide and judge’ rather than people doing so. Nevertheless I am still grappling with the idea that decision making is in fact ‘fast and frugal’, especially in courts or similar contexts. Firstly, it seems a bit dubious to generalise such findings and prescribe simple heuristics as ‘explanations’ of human judgement. If anything, such heuristics simply describe processes but don’t explain much about them. Still, just because a descriptive model is a better predictor of final decisions, doesn’t necessarily mean that decisions were actually reached the way the model prescribes. Moreover, assuming that shorter decision times mean less information examined ignores emotional influences and individual differences of those who decide and different characteristicsbetween cases to decide upon..

Being the liberal that I am, I find the idea of reducing human judgement to a computational equation sinister. Such an approach seems valid as a description (if we accept the inherent assumptions that it entails) but has little or no prescriptive validity. The idea that a computational heuristic can simulate human judgement seems constructed and arbitrary as it ignores the phenomenological characteristics of human judgement. That is, it attempts to study the content of though than the actual experience of thinking and deciding and by doing so it ignores consciousness. Why wouldn’t a cognitive psychologist enquire into the phenomena of consciousness by asking people (judges in particular) how they arrived at a particular judgement? How can one assume that this is irrelevant? How can one assume that all cases are treated the same way and that qualitative characteristics of those cases are dismissed or that the emotional influences that such cases or particular characteristics of those cases induce don’t come to play? Why is there a problem with each case being treated as an exception?

It is ironic that cognitive psychology has left experiential and subjective aspects of experience behind and it has attempted to reduce thinking and deciding to an information processing mechanism, leaving the role of feelings, affective and non-affective or sensory, aside (Clore, 1992). From the spreading activation model of memory (Collins & Loftus, 1975) to the ‘revolutionary’ insights to perception, that might actually be more relevant to ophthalmology and not psychology (Klein, 1989) subjective experience, emotion (as such), and individuality have been overlooked.

Yet I feel it is important here to position myself in relation to the concepts discussed here and my own feelings about these concepts described above. As a very liberal individual, I often think of science as socially constructed. I have often questioned the so called scientific methodology and the essentialist assumptions that it entails and I have advocated qualitative research in psychology as an alternative to the prevailing quantitative methods employed. Cognitive psychology has always seemed dubious to me, throughout this degree course as it seems to ignore the very notion that gave birth to it: cognitivism. Dhami’s (2003) study is, to me, another example of how the discipline has been reduced to the study of information processing and I can’t help but wonder: Do we need more ‘quality’ in cognitive psychology? Do we need to revisit the concept of ‘cognitivism’ that once gave rise to this discipline as alternative?

References

Clore, G. (1992). Cognitive Phenomenology: Feelings and the Construction of Judgement. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.). The construction of Social Judgement (pp. 133-163). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Collins, Allan M.; Loftus, Elizabeth F., "A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing", Psychological Review, 82, 407-428.

Dhami, M. K. (2003). Psychological models of professional decision-making. Psychological Science, 14, 175-180.

Dhami, M. K., & Ayton, P. (2001). Bailing and jailing the fast and frugal way. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 14,141-168.

Evans, J. (1998). Matching Bias in Conditional reasoning. Do we understand it after 25 years? Thinking and Reasoning, 4, 45 – 110.

Kein, P. (1989). Psychology Exposed or The Emperor’s New Clothes. New York: Routledge.

The winds of Change: Online Learning

After attending the introductory lecture to the partucular module for which this blog was designed, I was left thinking that the wings of change have already transformed university education. The module in question forms part of the BSc in Psychology curriculum at London Metropolitan University and it is assessed alomost exclusively in online formats. Reflective blogs, wikis and online learning environments all form part of the learning experience here. But what does this actually mean?

Surely, being able to access material at any time and place is convenient. I have always had a theoretical interest in learning styles and it is obvious to me that online learning can accommodate different learning styles (Bonanno, 2005).Ironically, having struggled for two consecutive days to post here using a mysteriously slow and disorganised mobile broadband connection, I fround myself keeping a written reflective journal in order to transfer my thoughts here at a later time. Clearly when technology doesn’t work, online learning seems such a tremendous task! The question for me is how -since it’s cognitive psychology we are talking about here- the frustration that such technological mishaps cause interfere with the cognitive processes of learning. I will revisit this idea throughout the course, being aware of the interplay between such affective influences and cognitive processes in the context of my online learning experience. If judgement involves evaluation and decision implies a way of action (Hardman, 2009), it will be interesting to form a judgement on online learning based on my own experience here, and to decide how I can use this rescource to engage with the learning material.

To my surprise as I found myself procrastinating more than usual, I found out that online learning may actually require more motivation and the responsibility to generate such motivation lies with the learner. Here I need to take initiative to access tha learning process and engage with the learning material which raises issues of self-awareness and self-regulation. In other words, is the successful online learner a more ‘grown-up’ learner? As the flexibility of online learning allows more time away from the educational task, it paradoxically gives rise to increased discipline and I find this challenging.

Online education clearly defeats great distances, is cheaper and faster and perhaps more accessible. But do we have to do away with the social and interractive aspects of learning? Now the question is on education: Will all education be conducted through the Internet in the future?

References

Bonanna, K. (2005). Online Learning; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Paper presented to the Australian School Library XIX Association Biennial Conference – Meeting the Challenge, Zillmere, April 2005.

Hardman, D (2009). Judgement and Decision Making: Psychological perspectives. Chichester: Backwell.